Honduras Is In A Power Gap-And Two Late Moves Are Raising The Stakes

Key Points

• With the January 27, 2026 handover nearing, President Xiomara Castro is still using executive power to shape what “the result” means.
• She has kept the U.S. extradition treaty alive, a move that keeps Washington engaged and preserves cooperation on top drug cases.
• Her sweeping recount decree keeps the election politically unsettled, drawing regional pushback and raising short-term risk.

Honduras is in the uncomfortable gap between an election night and a transfer of power. In that gap, the winner waits. The outgoing president still holds the machinery of state. And every late move carries extra meaning.

The election was close. On November 30, 2025, Hondurans voted for a new president. The electoral authority later declared Nasry “Tito” Asfura the winner with about 40.27% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Salvador Nasralla at about 39.53%. That should have been the clean end of the story.

Instead, Castro’s side kept it open. Decree 58-2025 ordered a broad, vote-by-vote recount that local reporting described as covering tens of thousands of tally sheets.

Honduras’ Outgoing President Makes Two Last-Second Bets as the Transition Tightens

Eight governments — Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic — publicly rejected the decree, warning it weakens electoral institutions.

Honduras’ Electoral Justice Tribunal urged strict custody of ballots and related records. The message was clear: this dispute is no longer only about numbers. It is about who commands the rules.

At the same time, Castro moved on the one issue that reaches beyond Honduras fast: extradition to the United States.

On January 10, she instructed her foreign minister to void the August 28, 2024 notices that had started Honduras’ withdrawal from the U.S.–Honduras extradition convention, signed in 1909 and in force since 1912.

She said her government extradited more than 52 people. Keeping the treaty in force protects that record. It also keeps a key channel to Washington active during a fragile handover. She paired the gesture with a complaint.

Castro criticized U.S. clemency granted in December to former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was extradited in 2022 and sentenced in June 2024 to 45 years in New York on drug-trafficking and weapons-related conspiracy charges.

Her argument was that joint enforcement looks weaker when a flagship conviction is softened.

Put together, the pattern is classic late-term leverage: keep foreign partners close, keep the domestic outcome contested, and force the next government to inherit a louder, more complicated start.

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